2018

Flurry of Inactivity

One snowstorm reveals why leaders must be present in a
crisis

by Daniel Markovitz

It won’t be long before
snow starts to fall again. And as the weather cools, it reminds me of the
blizzard that struck the New York City area last December and a lesson it can
teach leaders everywhere.

In the wake of a 20-inch snowfall, Manhattan streets were plowed
quickly, but streets in the outer boroughs remained unplowed for days. New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg apologized, promised a thorough post-mortem of the
poor municipal response, and then demoted and reassigned three people. The
mayor’s approval ratings fell to the lowest point of his administration.

In New Jersey, where up to 31 inches of snow fell,
Gov. Chris Christie took heat for vacationing at Disney World instead of
returning to the state to help the recovery efforts. He made matters worse by
defending his decision to put his responsibility to his family first.

"I wouldn’t change the decision even if I could do it right now," he
said at the time. "I had a great five days with my children. I promised that."1
As a result, the governor’s nearly bulletproof image, constructed during a year
of tough leadership and emphasis on taking responsibility, took a beating.

Getting
out there

Then
there was Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, NJ. Booker personally responded to
several calls for help, showing up with a shovel to help motorists who were
stuck in the snow and bringing diapers to others.

The mayor provided constant updates on Twitter so people knew what he
was doing, even asking citizens to tweet him about where help was needed. The
mayor became a hero in Newark, despite facing a difficult reelection earlier in
the year.

From a lean leadership perspective, what strikes me is the fact that
only one of these leaders went to gemba—a Japanese term meaning "the real place."
You could argue a mayor has better things to do with his or her time than
shovel snow. But I disagree. People need to see—and, in the case of
Booker, hear via Twitter—that their leaders are willing and able to work
in the trenches.

Setting
priorities

Of course, Bloomberg,
Booker and Christie have higher-level leadership tasks to ensure these service
failures don’t recur. But it’s important for everyone in the state, city or any
organization to see that their leaders are present and doing everything they
can to help ease their pain.

And if the problem is something that requires specialized skills the
leader doesn’t have—such as shutting down a nuclear reactor, tunneling
into a mine shaft or performing surgery—the leader should be supporting
those that have the critical skills by bringing them whatever they ask for,
whether it’s coffee and donuts or fresh bandages.

It’s no coincidence that a salient memory of former New York City Mayor
Rudy Giuliani is him standing atop the World Trade
Center rubble, while a lasting image of former President George Bush is him
peering through the window of Air Force One several thousand feet above New
Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

No one expected Giuliani to spend all day, every day at the World Trade
Center. No one expected Booker to spend all day, every day shoveling snow. But
people do expect their leaders to at least be present where the work is being
done for some amount of time.

One snowstorm, three leaders and one lesson: It’s essential for leaders
to get out of the corner office or the conference room and go to gemba as part of their standard work. That need is even greater in an
emergency.

Reference

Daniel Markovitz is
president of TimeBack Management in Corte Madera, CA.
He earned an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business in
California. Markovitz is the author of the newly
released book A Factory of One.